Stay on target

South Park’s latest premiere marked the show’s 21st season, but instead of legally drinking for the first time the cartoon just continued to deliver its occasionally brilliant, occasionally awful, unapologetic and hyper-topical centrist humor that has let it last for so long.

However, not all viewers were pleased, and not just because the episode itself wasn’t so great. Tired of triggering people who bother to care about things, South Park instead triggered everyone’s Amazon Echo home speakers.

In “White People Renovating Houses” a group of disgruntled Confederate deplorable types protest smart speakers like the Amazon Echo and Apple’s upcoming HomePod as threats to their livelihoods. Naturally, this leads to a lot of instances of characters talking to Alexa. And because Alexa doesn’t discriminate between Cartman on the screen and its real owners in the home, anyone who had an Alexa on while watching the episode had to deal with some pretty annoying and/or funny interruptions.

There are plenty more cases of this on Twitter as viewers complain about South Park causing their Amazon Echoes and Google Home products to do everything from repeating phrases to stocking up shopping lists to setting off alarms. Cartman even sets up an entire crude Alexa-Siri-Google conversation that must have been a nightmare for folks who own all those devices.

Related, earlier this year Burger King tried to put out an ad that purposefully activated Google’s digital assistants, but Google put a stop to that. However, that ad was announced ahead of time, giving Google time to prepare. Alexa was left defenseless against this unexpected South Park plug. But maybe the manufacturers will just follow South Park’s lead and embrace apathy. After all, this prank is free publicity for everyone involved.

Still, we’d rather have our smart speakers inadvertently controlled by TV shows we’re watching than maliciously controlled by whisper hackers. As South Park always preaches, you’ve gotta hear both sides. Here’s hoping the next episode is better and leaves your smart home alone.